Any recommendations for a UK based slide scanning service?

[davidedric]

Hi,

Prompted by Marie's recent post, can anyone recommend a UK based slide scanning service? I would be looking for a scan/retouch service.

Thanks,

Dave

[Donald]

Dave

After looking around I ended up getting myself an Epson V500 scanner and did them myself.

[Geoff F]

That is what I do, Donald. Using an Epson Perfection 3590 which does slides/negatives. Probably an obsolete model now.

But, although fairly good results can be obtained with care, and some editing afterwards, it probably doesn't quite come up to the best pro results from much more expensive equipment. However, there is also a cost to be considered; which probably won't be cheap.

And there is quite a time factor also involved. Plus and retouching work.

I've a whole stack of slides etc to process for my local history society, which I'm doing in small batches when it's raining!

But I don't know where to suggest for a competitive price in the UK. There are a lot of scanning to digital companies around but they seem to mostly just do commercial archiving; data work etc. I wonder if some of the pro photo processing/printing companies do this sort of work.

[davidedric]

Should have mentioned that I already have a Nikon Coolscan 5000, but I find the 2 to 3 minutes per slide while I sit alongside it very tedious. I had thought of getting a new scanner which could scan several at a time and which would save some time, but since I expect this to be a one off exercise, I'm a bit reluctant.

I think I will give these guys a try www.exposure22.com

They offer a free trial of 5 slides, and will do 2 copies of each: one with their basic service and one that has been manually pp'd. I figure I can also scan them myself with the Coolscan, and see what I think.

Dave

[Geoff F]

Let us know who you get on with them, Dave.

I looked up a few companies who do specialist printing work, including albums for weddings etc but none appeared to do slide transfer.

Previously, I have been faced with medium format slides for the history group. The only way I found of overcoming the failure of my scanner to cope with this successfully, was to mount them vertically then shine a daylight quality lamp from behind and to photograph the slide.

It sort of worked, but was quite time consuming. And I see there are some more of this size in the latest package from the history group.